Chapter 9

SPREADING THE MYTH

IN THIS CHAPTER

• The Big Con • Getting Hooked • All Smokers Lie • Luring You Back In • The Miracle Of Uncle John • The Right To Smoke • Role Models • Seeing The Truth Too Late

‘It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free – to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.’
ALDOUS HUXLEY, BRAVE NEW WORLD

THE BIG CON

So the solution to ending the nicotine craving is NOT to smoke or vape. That way you break the cycle of addiction, kill the Little Monster and get free. Wait a minute! Isn’t that what all smokers do when they try to quit? Why doesn’t it work for them? If it’s so easy to quit, why do so many people find it incredibly hard?

To use the words of Aldous Huxley, smokers and, in fact, all nicotine addicts are ‘psychological captives’. Perhaps you think I’m going too far in comparing the world of nicotine addiction to the Brave New World of Huxley’s imagination. OK, smoking is a killer and nicotine is a highly addictive drug, but surely I’m not suggesting that the tobacco industry and the pharmaceutical industry, with the nicotine industry carved up between them, are

so evil as to trap their victims into a spiral of self-destruction by brainwashing them into believing its products are good for them, or at least not so bad for them!

According to the US Center for Disease Control & Prevention, smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States. This accounts for about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. That’s the equivalent of three Boeing 747 jumbo jets crashing every single day.

Any industry that continues to push out products that are proven to be the cause of more than seven million deaths every year worldwide can hardly be held up as a paragon of virtue, but there is something far more sinister at work. Even the tobacco industry is not clever enough to devise the level of brainwashing that leads millions of people to smoke themselves to death every year. It doesn’t have to.

Smokers are already doing the industry’s dirty work

Nobody spreads the myths that con us into smoking more than smokers themselves. It seems incredible, doesn’t it? No smoker enjoys smoking, every smoker wishes they could stop, yet every smoker promotes the belief that smoking provides some kind of pleasure or crutch.

Exercise: THE PRISON

Imagine you’ve arrived at a prison in which millions of people have been imprisoned by a vicious tyrant. The conditions in this camp are terrible and all the prisoners are miserable. If they worked together,

they could easily break down the walls that are keeping them captive, but the force that’s keeping them imprisoned is incredibly powerful and they feel powerless to escape.

You discover that the tyrant keeps control of all the prisoners in the camp not by holding a gun to anybody’s head but through cunning manipulation of their minds. Every prisoner is afraid of trying to escape because they’ve been warned that it will involve a terrible sacrifice and if they fail in their attempt, life inside the prison will get worse for them. They feel they are somehow being looked after while they’re in the prison and they believe that life outside the camp will be unbearable.

They’re so scared of the consequences of trying to escape that they actually turn on anyone who tries to escape, rather than turning on their captor.

As you examine the prison more closely, you realize there is actually nothing keeping the prisoners in. There are no guards, no guns, no walls, no gates, nothing. You also know that life outside the prison is infinitely preferable to the life they’re leading. They could walk out easily and instantly discover the joy of freedom. Yet their beliefs are keeping them captive. And together they have created a situation whereby everyone in the camp plays a part in keeping everyone imprisoned.

It’s obvious to you what they need to do to escape this miserable situation…

STOP BEING CONNED BY THOSE FALSE BELIEFS

Your challenge is to find a way to show them the truth.

This scenario puts you in the position of a non-smoker, looking at smokers and wondering why they continue to punish themselves. This is the situation I found myself in when I had my moment

of revelation and embarked on my mission to cure the world of smoking. The solution is simple – it’s getting smokers to stop listening to each other, and start hearing the truth about smoking, that poses the challenge. It’s time for you to see the nicotine industry as it really is: an addiction business which is designed to enslave you for life. FOR LIFE!!

You may be thinking that it’s okay to vilify the tobacco industry; they’ve been proven not to care, but surely I shouldn’t be so tough on the pharmaceutical industry. Don’t they exist in order to do good? Aren’t nicotine patches and gum and e-cigarettes the result of their desire to cure smokers of their addiction?

The pharmaceutical industry does a considerable amount of good, but it also does tremendous harm. Their manipulation of clinical trials is well chronicled. And if you observe the nature of the beast, you’ll notice they’re incentivized to find treatments rather than cures – preferably treatments that last a lifetime. The reason is obvious. A lifetime of prescriptions and Big Pharma’s coffers start overflowing. There is no better ‘medicine’ in the pharmaceutical companies’ eyes than one which is highly addictive and which has to be taken for life! No wonder the pharma industry and the tobacco industry are becoming inseparable as they slice up the lucrative new e-cigarette market between them.

The discovery of the Easyway method has had an incredible impact on the smoking world and helped tens of millions of prisoners to get free, but countless millions still remain in the camp, trapped by their own false beliefs and the hugely powerful influence of other smokers.

GETTING HOOKED

The influence of other smokers is what lured you into the trap in the first place. In the vast majority of cases, that first cigarette will

have been provided by another smoker. It seemed like a generous and flattering gesture at the time. They probably offered you your second, too, and your third. As a novice smoker you might tell yourself you won’t get hooked on it; you’re just dabbling. The taste and smell are so foul you feel confident you could never get hooked on it, but before long you’re buying your own.

You know you can’t keep scrounging cigarettes off other people, so eventually you take the plunge and pay for your own pack. You’re eager to repay the debt, so you start offering your cigarettes to the smokers who started you off with theirs, as well as any other smokers you come into contact with. Already you are helping to promote the myth.

But the influence of other smokers doesn’t stop at offering you cigarettes. It is mostly responsible for your own decision to start smoking and for the myths that keep you in the nicotine trap.

Ask a smoker if they would recommend others to take up smoking and they are most likely to say, ‘No way!’ Yet unwittingly they do just that.

And it’s often the people who care about you most that do the most damage. Parents who smoke are a powerful influence on their children. They think they can get away with the attitude of ‘Do as I say, not as I do’, but their lectures on smoking are wasted if their children see them puffing away.

As a parent you might think your children will listen to the wisdom of one who knows from experience, yet all the child sees is a grown-up smoking apparently out of choice, so of course they conclude that it must be giving them some wonderful pleasure or crutch.

The myth of pleasure or a crutch is promoted by everyone who smokes. After all, everyone knows smoking is a killer that burns your money, makes you unfit and antisocial, and turns you

into a slave, so what other possible reason could smokers have for continuing to do it?

ALL SMOKERS LIE

The trouble is, smokers convince themselves with the same Big Con. They have to because they can’t live with the truth. They lie to others and they lie to themselves because the alternative is too unbearable. It’s bad enough being a smoker when you block your mind to the filth, the poison, the wheezing and coughing, the slavery and humiliation; if you had to face up to the grim reality day after day, life would not seem worth living.

So it suits smokers to buy into the myth because then they can pretend that there is a good reason for smoking and that they’re not as helpless as it seems. Tragically, they begin to believe their own lies, as well as those of other smokers.

There are few things more pathetic than a smoker’s lies. I was the worst! They lie that they haven’t smoked when they reek of smoke. They lie about how much they smoke. They lie that they can take it or leave it. They lie that they will quit.

All these lies are really an attempt to convince nobody but themselves. It is the only alternative to admitting they are pathetic, helpless slaves who get no pleasure or crutch from smoking and can’t understand why they can’t just quit.

LURING YOU BACK IN

You will find it useful to recognize the influence of other smokers and to harness this knowledge to help you in your own escape. All too often smokers try to scupper the efforts of those who are attempting to quit. The thought of someone escaping from the

prison unnerves them because if that person succeeds, it challenges their own belief that escape is impossible and, therefore, not worth trying. As long as you have the fear of success, another smoker’s escape will unsettle you. You feel like the last person left on the sinking ship.

Even when you do succeed in escaping, you will find there are always smokers ready to try to lure you back into the trap. Make sure you are not vulnerable by preparing yourself in advance for the typical scenarios when a smoker’s lies might snare you.

These scenarios are very often linked to a crisis: a car crash, a bereavement, a job loss, the break-up of a relationship… when these things happen, there always seems to be a smoker on hand ready to ‘comfort’ you with a cigarette.

These smokers aren’t evil. They genuinely want to help. It’s just that they don’t regard you as a non-smoker; they see you as a smoker who just happens not to be smoking at the moment. Because of the brainwashing, they assume that, like all smokers, the thing you really want at this difficult time is a cigarette.

Just as smokers get youngsters hooked by offering them freebies, they do the same to adults who succumb to the temptation.

Your smoking friend is there with the supply but warns you, ‘You’ll get hooked again.’

I read this book by this guy called Allen Carr, and the great thing is that while you’re reading the book you get to smoke… this guy’s brilliant. And you get to the last page and he says, ‘All right, light your last one’, and you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I want it – but, OK, if you say so, Allen.’ That was it and you put it out and then you’re just done. And I haven’t smoked since.

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‘No way!’ you insist. ‘I just need one now. I’d never buy them.’

But by smoking the one cigarette, you’ve started the cycle of addiction and soon you’re back asking for another. The smoker is secretly pleased that you’re back for more – it makes them feel less stupid about their own addiction.

But their generosity extends only so far, and soon you feel the pressure to repay the cigarettes they’ve given you. The dreadful moment comes when you find yourself buying a pack and suffering the humiliation of feeling like a failure.

Only a few days earlier you were a non-smoker who swore you would never buy cigarettes again. Now you’re having to explain to your family and friends why you couldn’t last.

To begin with, you protest that you bought them only to repay your smoking friend, but you know the truth. You’re back in the trap.

THE MIRACLE OF UNCLE JOHN

When you believe smoking provides some sort of pleasure or crutch, it’s not surprising you might feel you’re helping a friend in need when you offer them a cigarette in a crisis. The delusion is powerful and convincing until you are shown the truth. But some of the lies that smokers tell in order to justify their decision to smoke are so far-fetched it’s absurd.

A classic example is the myth of Uncle John. Uncle John is a character who crops up regularly in debates about smoking. He’s a smoker who claims to have smoked 40 a day since the age of 14 and enjoyed every single one of them. Now here he is, in his 80s and still going strong. In fact, he claims never to have had a day’s sickness in his life!

The implication is not just that smoking doesn’t harm you, but that it’s actually good for you!

People who argue in favour of smoking love to wheel out Uncle

John as their star witness – living proof that all the health risks linked to smoking are not to be believed. Smokers cling doggedly to Uncle John to counteract the terrifying statistics society insists on throwing at us.

On the evidence of one example, they are trying to build an argument against the irrefutable evidence of seven million people who die as a result of smoking each year.

Then they bring out Auntie Jane, poor dear, who never smoked a cigarette in her life yet died from lung cancer at the age of 50.

THE RIGHT TO SMOKE

On top of this, there is the human rights argument: ‘Everybody should be free to choose whether or not they take the risk of smoking.’ This is the stance of the pro-nicotine movement who use a variety of spurious arguments to justify their collective slavery to nicotine addiction. For example, they state that tobacco sales, JUUL sales, etc., bring in billions of pounds in taxation. So never mind the people who lose their lives as a result, it’s all justified by the money!

They also argue that public smoking bans have led to many older smokers no longer going to bars but drinking and smoking at home instead – the implication being that old people are being forced into social isolation by the ban on smoking in public places. It’s not the smoking ban that’s forcing them into isolation; it’s their addiction to nicotine, an addiction that Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and JUUL (now partly owned by Big Tobacco) work hard to maintain.

Smokers have no freedom anyway. They do not choose to get hooked any more than a fly chooses to get trapped by the pitcher plant. Nor do they choose to remain smoker

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Smokers don’t enjoy smoking or vaping. They only think they do because they’re drug addicts, and so they feel most miserable when they’re not allowed to smoke

Pro-nicotine groups are always funded by Big Tobacco or Big Pharma. Why do you think that is?

Exercise: YOUR FREEDOM OF CHOICE

While you’re thinking about the right to choose, ask yourself these questions:

1. How many non-smokers would you say there are in the world who wish they were smokers?

2. How many ex-smokers do you think there are in the world who wish they were still smokers?

3. How many smokers do you know who, if they could now go back to the time when they lit that first cigarette, would still choose to light it?

If you’ve been completely honest, your answers will be:

1. None

2. None

3. None

The real motivation behind people continuing to smoke or vape or JUUL or dip or chew or snus is

FEAR

Fear they won’t be able to enjoy or cope with life without nicotine.

Fear that they have to go through some terrible ordeal to quit.

Fear that they can never be completely free from the craving.

It doesn’t dawn on them that non-nicotine addicts never suffer

any of these fears, or that the cigarette, or e-cigarette, far from relieving their fears, causes them. The fear of success is an illusion created by a myth. Yet the fears are so great that they override the very real dangers created by smoking and vaping. If you vape, make no mistake, the tobacco industry’s involvement in vaping means only one thing: you’re the victim.

ROLE MODELS

The influence of smokers on one another is reminiscent of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four . The creation of a society in which the people control each other through false information and fear sounds like a work of fiction, but it’s something we have witnessed in real life through history and it is exactly how smokers influence one another today.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four , Big Brother, the embodiment of the system, appears to the public on ‘telescreens’. Orwell was ahead of his time in recognizing the influence of films and television. Hollywood and TV have played a major role in perpetuating the illusion that smoking is glamorous, cool, intellectual, interesting. The film industry has become incredibly sophisticated in finding new ways to awe our senses, but the one sense that remains detached from the action on the screen is the sense of smell.

Consequently, directors are able to portray smoking in a glamorous light, without having to deal with the reality that kissing, or even being in a room with, someone who smokes, is a foul experience, no matter how good-looking, sexy, eloquent or cool they appear to be.

On-screen heroes help to perpetuate the myths about smoking. I’ve already talked about the image of Sherlock Holmes smoking his pipe as he tries to think his way through the latest mysterious case. The portrayal of smoking as an aid to concentration is

commonplace in films, as is its portrayal as a social crutch, a relief for stress, a relaxation aid, a natural accompaniment for a drink, a meal and sex.

Smoking film stars are just more prisoners in the camp, but their influence is particularly strong. The power of the big screen is extraordinary. From Greta Garbo to Leonardo DiCaprio, the image of the film star with a cigarette has encouraged countless people to start smoking. During the 1970s, Hollywood woke up to the dangers of smoking and made its own attempt to cut down, with smoking appearing far less in films than it did in the days of Humphrey Bogart, James Dean and Audrey Hepburn, but today Tinseltown appears to be well and truly hooked again. In truth, it never really broke free.

Whether it was Sylvester Stallone, Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, John Travolta, Olivia Newton John, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Al Pacino, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Sigourney Weaver, Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman, Uma Thurman, Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett or Ryan Reynolds, they’ve all conspired, to a greater or lesser extent, to make cigarettes and smoking appear cool, sexy or sophisticated. Do you really think that any of them would have appeared any less desirable or cool, in any way, if they hadn’t smoked? Or less tough? Or less sophisticated? Look at the names. Remember the films.

This isn’t, by any means, an exhaustive list at all. As you read it, I have no doubt that you will be able to recall many more smoking moments in the films that you’ve loved throughout your life. The list spans more than 70 years.

No doubt by the time you’re reading this, the latest Hollywood stars will have added themselves to the list. Over the years, many Hollywood stars have played a leading role in luring people into

the nicotine trap and they have been paid handsomely to do so. It’s not just film stars either. TV celebrities, models, pop stars and even criminals can be powerful role models, and if they smoke, their fans will smoke.

SEEING THE TRUTH TOO LATE

There are two things that make smokers stop lying: one is escaping the trap and becoming a happy non-smoker; the other is the realization that they have not escaped the deadly consequences of smoking.

Hollywood legend Yul Brynner had the courage to admit that he had been stupid after he knew that his smoking was bringing his life to a premature end. ‘Marlboro Man’ Wayne McLaren became an active anti-smoking campaigner when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tragically, he was one of five actors who have appeared as the cowboy on Marlboro adverts to have died of smoking-related diseases.

Film writer Joe Eszterhas developed throat cancer as a result of heavy smoking, after which he expressed deep regret for the way he promoted smoking in his film Basic Instinct , a film so influential that it led to a tobacco company launching a brand of ‘Basic’ cigarettes. Writing in the New York Times , Eszterhas said:

‘Remembering all this, I find it hard to forgive myself. I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings. I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did.

‘Eighteen months ago, I was diagnosed with throat cancer, the result of a lifetime of smoking. I am alive but maimed. Much of my larynx is gone. I have some difficulty speaking; others have some difficulty understanding me.

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Too late in the day, the likes of Eszterhas, Brynner and McLaren realized the folly of smoking and tried to make amends by using their influence to discourage others from smoking. If only they had used their influence in this way from the start.

When you’re faced with the reality of a terminal disease, it’s impossible to keep fooling yourself with the Big Con. Smokers who quit when it’s too late still display the characteristics of elation at finally breaking free from the slavery of nicotine addiction, even amid the sadness of their premature demise. Their determination to stop others from making the same mistake is completely heartfelt. Sadly, they are not left with enough time to undo the damage they did through their influence as smokers.

As we see film stars and other role models, who we once regarded as demi-gods, dying miserably as the result of smoking, it dawns on us that they weren’t smoking because it’s cool and glamorous but because they were conned, just like we were, and they wish they hadn’t become smokers, just as we do. You don’t want to wait until you’re faced with the reality of a premature death before you convince yourself that there is absolutely no benefit to smoking. You have so much to live for. It’s time for you to stop being part of the Big Con.

Anyone can walk free from the prison – all you have to do is ignore the influence of other smokers, see through the myth and make your own rational decision to stop smoking.